Share this with

Helen Crawford, Nehemiah Kish and Fernando Montaño in the Royal Ballet’s production of Alexei Ratmansky’s 24 Preludes (Picture: Robbie Jack/Corbis)

From a violent Colombian barrio to dancing at the Royal Opera House, rising ballet star Fernando Montaño has lived his own Billy Elliot story.

And this week he was named Personality of the Year at the second annual LUKAS awards, acknowledging the achievements of the 1million Latin American, Spanish and Portuguese residents in Britain.

‘It does sometimes feel strange,’ admits Montaño, a First Artist with the Royal Ballet since 2010 who counts the likes of Carlos Acosta and Vivienne Westwood as friends. ‘I always wanted to be a ballet dancer but I never thought I’d be living in another country and meeting these people.’

Montaño, 28, cuts a slight but lithe figure, whose soft voice, quick smile and soulful brown eyes bring out the mothering tendencies of the Royal Opera House canteen staff.

Advertisement

Advertisement

And he’s come a long way since he first saw ballet on television aged five. ‘I had no idea what it was but I ran round the house trying to copy what they did,’ he recalls.

The youngest of four children, he was six when the family moved from Colombia’s Pacific coast to Cali, the country’s third-largest city. They settled in the violent Aguablanca neighbourhood.

Vivienne Westwood and Fernando Montaño (Picture: File)

‘It’s one of the roughest areas of Cali, full of young guys dealing drugs and robbing people,’ he explains. ‘Even when I’ve gone back for holidays, I don’t really go out: all you hear all night is gunfire. It’s very scary.’

Hardly the place for a little boy to pursue the dream of a dance career. And yet Montaño’s mother recognised his passion – she nicknamed her skinny youngest son the ‘dancing skeleton’ – and took him to ballroom dance classes.

When he won a scholarship after just a month there, his father relinquished his hopes that his son would become a footballer.

Once he’d switched to taking ballet lessons, Montaño says: ‘I knew immediately that was what I wanted to do.’ As luck had it, Colombia’s only proper ballet school is in Cali. He won his place there aged 12.

‘No one in my family dances,’ says Montaño. ‘I was bullied in school – but they were kind of impressed when I could do the splits, which earned me some respect.’

Advertisement

Advertisement

As ballet dancers usually start much younger, Montaño had a lot of catching up to do. But his tenacity – and his parents’ financial sacrifices, which included remortgaging their home – paid off: he won a scholarship to the famed Cuban National Ballet School in Havana.

The 14-year-old found life in Cuba tough. ‘There were many times when we were starving. Sometimes, even if you had the money, there was nothing to buy,’ says Montaño. ‘We’d fill up with water.

And when I was waiting two, three hours for the bus – it was the year of the Elián González controversy and all the transport was being used to bus people in for marches – I’d think many times: “Who thought it was a good idea to come here?”’

Montaño persevered, graduated and moved into the Cuban National Ballet, winning some principal roles in his first year. A chance to go to Italy led to him being offered a scholarship by the Teatro Nuovo di Torino. There, the 19-year-old was spotted by the director of the English National Ballet School and invited to audition in Britain.

‘Of course I said yes: I knew that there were dancers like Carlos Acosta and Darcey Bussell there,’ says Montaño, who won his place at the Royal Ballet in 2005.

Fernando Montaño as the Jester in Cinderella (Picture: Robbie Jack/Corbis)

‘I missed my first show: I didn’t speak any English and I didn’t know you had to check the boards, so I did my class that day and just went home,’ he admits.

Advertisement

‘Rehearsals were a nightmare, because even though ballet terminology is in French, they’d say: “Go to the right,” in English and I’d go left and bump into everyone.’

Adding to his difficulties, two months after starting at Covent Garden, Montaño’s mother died aged just 45, having contracted lupus.

‘When I was called to the office, I thought I was going to be promoted,’ he says. ‘I couldn’t even cry when I heard the news.’

Meanwhile, professional opportunities came less frequently than Montaño had hoped. ‘What they show in [the film] Black Swan is nothing, really, compared to the real thing; there was a point I was so upset, I was about to leave,’ he says.

Around this time, though, Montaño met Vivienne Westwood. The legendary British fashion designer asked him to perform during a charity fashion event and the pair have since forged a strong friendship.

Montaño has modelled her clothes in fashion shoots and proudly points out that Westwood can often be seen wearing a pendant of two ballet shoes that he gave her.

His interests outside ballet include supporting the Children of the Andes charity, which aids children in poverty in Colombia, including in his old neighbourhood of Aguablanca.

And in the first season under new Royal Ballet director Kevin O’Hare, coinciding with the LUKAS award, opportunities for Montaño to take the stage have multiplied. Most recently, he was chosen by feted Russian choreographer Alexei Ratmansky for a newly commissioned piece for the Royal Ballet.

Advertisement

‘I’m getting a lot of attention in the Colombian press right now,’ says Montaño, who has always admired the god-like status Acosta commands in Cuba. ‘There is no national company there, but ballet is definitely getting more popular.

‘I think you set your own limits,’ he says. ‘I’ll keep trying different things because you never know what will happen next. But I’d like my dance career to be here: I feel like this is the right place.’